Genesis 8

God Remembers Noah

1God remembered Noah and all the wild and domestic animals with him in the ship. So God made a wind blow over the earth, and the water started to go down. 2The deep springs and the sky had been shut, and the rain had stopped pouring. 3The water began to recede from the land. At the end of 150 days the water had decreased. 4On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ship came to rest in the mountains of Ararat. 5The water kept decreasing until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

6After 40 more days Noah opened the window he had made in the ship 7and sent out a raven. It kept flying back and forth until the water on the land had dried up. 8Next, he sent out a dove to see if the water was gone from the surface of the ground. 9The dove couldn’t find a place to land because the water was still all over the earth. So it came back to Noah in the ship. He reached out and brought the dove back into the ship. 10He waited seven more days and again sent the dove out of the ship. 11The dove came to him in the evening, and in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf. Then Noah knew that the water was gone from the earth. 12He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again, but it never came back to him.

13By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water on the land had dried up. Noah opened the top of the ship, looked out, and saw the surface of the ground. 14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was dry.

15Then God spoke to Noah, 16“Come out of the ship with your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives. 17Bring out every animal that’s with you: birds, domestic animals, and every creature that crawls on the earth. Be fertile, increase in number, and spread over the earth.”

18So Noah came out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. 19Every animal, crawling creature, and bird—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ship, one kind after another.

20Noah built an altar to the Lord. On it he made a burnt offering of each type of clean #8:20 “Clean” refers to anything that is presentable to God. animal and clean bird. 21The Lord smelled the soothing aroma. He said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, even though from birth their hearts are set on nothing but evil. I will never again kill every living creature as I have just done.

22As long as the earth exists,

planting and harvesting,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night

will never stop.”

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Genesis 8

The flood water went down

1And then God thought about Noah and the animals with him in that big boat. And he made a strong wind blow on the flood water to help it to go down. 2And God stopped the water from coming up from under the ground, and he stopped the rain falling from the sky.

3The flood water went down slowly, and after 5 months it was a lot lower. 4So 5 months after the start of the flood, the big boat got stuck in the mountains called the Ararat mountains. 5The flood water kept going down for the next 2½ months, and then they saw the tops of the mountains, sticking up out of the water.

Noah let some birds go out of the boat to fly around

6Then, 40 days later, Noah opened a window in the big boat. He wanted to find out if the water went down, and if a bird could find some dry ground. 7So he let a crow go out of the window. The crow didn’t come back to the big boat. It just kept on flying around until the flood waters dried up.

8-9So Noah let a pigeon go out of the window. But the flood water still covered the ground, and the pigeon couldn’t find a place to stop and rest, so it went back to the big boat. Noah held out his hand for the bird, and he helped it back into the boat.

10Noah waited for 7 more days, and then he let the pigeon go out of the boat again. 11This time the pigeon came back just before night time. It had a fresh leaf from an olive tree in its mouth. Then Noah knew the flood water was getting lower, and the trees were growing again. 12Noah waited 7 more days, then he sent the pigeon out again. This time the pigeon didn’t come back to the big boat.

Everyone left the boat

13Noah was 601 years old at that time.

The water was still going down, and on the 1st day of the new year, Noah took off some of the roof from the big boat and looked around. He could see that the ground was getting dry. 14After another 2 months, the earth was dry. 15Then God said to Noah, 16“You can go out of the big boat now. You can all go out, you, and your wife, and your sons, and their wives too. 17And bring all the animals out of the big boat. Bring out all the animals, and the birds, and the animals that crawl around on the ground. They can all come out, so they can live on the earth and have lots of young ones, so that they will go everywhere on the earth.”

18-19So Noah, and his wife, and his sons, and their wives, they all came out of the big boat. And all the animals and all the birds came out of the big boat too. They came out in groups. Each sort of animal was in its family group.

Noah said thank you to God

20Then Noah piled up stones to make a special table with a flat top, and he got one of each sort of animal and bird that are the right sorts to give to God, and he killed them, and he put them on that special table, and he burned them there. He did that to give them to God, to say thank you to God.

21-22God smelled the meat cooking on that stone table, and he was happy. Then God said to himself, “People always just want to do bad things. They do that all their lives, from when they are little kids, right up until the time they die. But I will never again punish them the same way that I did this time. I will never again finish up everything that breathes air, and I will never again curse the earth. While the earth is still here, the seasons will stay the same. There will always be day and night, and every year there will be a hot time and a cold time, a wet season and a dry season. There will always be a right time to plant seeds for food, and a right time to get the food from those plants.”

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